iFire

Project Overview

ARC Laureate Fellow: Dennis Del Favero
ARC Post-Doctoral Fellows: Susanne Thurow, Carlos Tirado
Office of National Intelligence Post-Doctoral Fellow: Baylee Britts
ARC Senior Programmer: Alex Ong
ARC Programmer: Navin Brohier
ARC 3D Modeller: Scott Cotterell
iCinema 3D Modeller: Lara Clemente
ARC PhD: Lithuan Li
ARC PhD: Frank Chen Wu
ARC PhD: Mario Flores
Data61 PhD: Nagida Helsby-Clark
ARC Project Collaborators and Partners: see overleaf
ARC Project Title: Burning landscapes: reimagining unpredictable scenarios
Project Funding: ARC FL200100004
Project website: UNSW Sharepoint iFire
2021-2025

The iFire project connects globally located researchers and 3D systems in the world’s first Artificially Intelligent (AI) immersive environment able to visualise the unpredictable behaviour of wildfires. The 3D systems are networked across a range of platforms using software that enables users to interact with each other by sharing the same 3D setting in real time, no matter their platform. These platforms range from mobile 360o 3D cinemas, 3D projection screens, 3D head-mounted displays to laptops and tablets, providing interaction for multiple distributed users at any one time. It is underpinned by an AI framework that analyses, learns from and responds to individual and group behaviour in real-time. Collaborators include UNSW, University of Melbourne, CSIRO/Data61, Australasian Fire & Emergency Service Authority Council, Fire Rescue NSW, San Jose State University, CALfire and the Climate Change Research Centre.

The project allows researchers and first responders to interact with unanticipated wildfire scenarios that operate independently of expectations according to their own dynamics in response to user actions. By generating unforeseen behaviours, the project challenges users to better understand and master the distributed dynamics of wildfire scenarios in a safe virtual environment. Assembling histories and expertise from diverse backgrounds and integrating them into an intelligent database with a library of fire behaviours, management procedures and protocols, it offers evolving life-like encounters that test responder and researcher situational awareness and collaborative decision-making in the face of these extreme events.

The project assembles a repertoire of expertise ranging across AI, computer graphics, creative arts, database architecture, environmental humanities, interaction design, fire management and immersive visualisation. The end-result is a mobile system that can be utilised by research organisations and training centres in-situ. The project is based on the award winning iCASTS safety training simulation system commercialised for the Australian and Chinese mining industry that has trained over 30,000 personnel across six mine locations.

The iFire project is financially supported under the Australian Research Council’s Laureate funding scheme.

iFire Network
iFire interactively networked across 360-degree 3D Cinema and Laptop


iFire Prototype 1.0 draft-Southern European and Australian studies

Media Reports